Opentrons raises $40 million so AI can run the lab experiments it keeps dreaming up

Opentrons Labworks announced a $40 million Series E on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, led by healthcare investor Avego, to scale the robots, software and data tools behind what it calls "autonomous science."

Everyone's building an AI scientist; somebody still has to pipette. That's the unglamorous gap Opentrons is selling into: models can spit out a thousand experiments before lunch, and the wet lab is the bottleneck. Being the cheap, open, already-everywhere robot is a decent position when "autonomous science" becomes the buzzword of the year. A $40 million Series E with no valuation attached is modest by AI standards, though — this is a hardware company raising like one, not an AI lab.

Opentrons Labworks announced a $40 million Series E on Oct. 29, 2026. A Series E is a later round of private funding, named with a letter. Healthcare investor Avego led the round. BroadOak Capital Partners joined. Existing investors include SoftBank Vision Fund and Khosla Ventures. The company is also backed by Sands Capital, Lerer Hippeau, and Y Combinator. Those names and the $40 million are Opentrons', from its release on Business Wire the same day.

Opentrons did not say what the round values the company at. A valuation is the price of the whole company, and the release does not give one.

Opentrons was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Long Island City, in New York. It makes open, API-driven lab automation robots. An API is a published way for software to tell a machine what to do, step by step, instead of a person clicking through every move. The current robot is Opentrons Flex. Those lines are Opentrons'.

The company says it has more than 11,000 robots in labs in more than 80 countries. That includes every top-20 U.S. research university and 14 of the top 15 global biopharma companies. Biopharma means the large drug companies. Those counts are Opentrons'.

The money goes to AI-driven experimental execution, wider automation, faster protocol development through software and AI, deeper ties to other lab machines, and expansion into new markets and countries. A protocol is the written recipe for an experiment. Experimental execution means actually running that recipe, not only designing it. Those uses of the money are Opentrons'.

The company's argument is a speed gap. AI models can invent hypotheses and design experiments much faster than a physical lab can run them. A hypothesis is a testable idea. Every experiment an Opentrons robot runs produces structured, reproducible data that can go back into the models. Structured means the results sit in a consistent format a computer can read. Reproducible means another lab can follow the same steps. That argument is Opentrons'.

Chief executive James Atwood, PhD, said, "Millions of scientists spend much of their day on manual work a robot can do. Giving that time back to discovery is the biggest opportunity in science." That quotation is his, on the release.

James Flexner, managing partner at Avego, said, "Every AI-driven discovery still has to be tested in a real lab." That quotation is his, on the release.

The picture is the Opentrons Flex robot from the front, with a protocol running on its touchscreen. The credit is Opentrons.

In plain terms, Opentrons on Thursday raised $40 million, led by Avego, and did not say what that money values the company at. It makes the Flex, an open lab robot, and says more than 11,000 of its machines are already in labs in more than 80 countries. The new money is for letting AI-written experiments actually get run, and for feeding the results back to the models.